Installation

Requirements

The minimum requirement by this project template is that your Web server supports PHP 5.6.0.

Installing using Composer

If you do not have Composer, follow the instructions in the Installing Yii section of the definitive guide to install it.

With Composer installed, you can then install the application using the following commands:

composer create-project --prefer-dist yiisoft/yii2-app-advanced yii-application

The command installs the advanced application in a directory named yii-application. You can choose a different directory name if you want.

It uses asset-packagist for managing bower and npm package dependencies through Composer. Also you can use asset-plugin, as in earlier versions, but it works slowly.

Install from an Archive File

Extract the archive file downloaded from yiiframework.com to a directory named advanced that is directly under the Web root.

Then follow the instructions given in the next subsection.

Preparing application

After you install the application, you have to conduct the following steps to initialize the installed application. You only need to do these once for all.

  1. Open a console terminal, execute the init command and select dev as environment.

    /path/to/php-bin/php /path/to/yii-application/init

    If you automate it with a script you can execute init in non-interactive mode.

    /path/to/php-bin/php /path/to/yii-application/init --env=Development --overwrite=All --delete=All

  2. Create a new database and adjust the components['db'] configuration in /path/to/yii-application/common/config/main-local.php accordingly.

  3. Open a console terminal, apply migrations with command /path/to/php-bin/php /path/to/yii-application/yii migrate.

  4. Set document roots of your web server:

    • for frontend /path/to/yii-application/frontend/web/ and using the URL http://frontend.test/
    • for backend /path/to/yii-application/backend/web/ and using the URL http://backend.test/

    For Apache it could be the following:

        <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName frontend.test
        DocumentRoot "/path/to/yii-application/frontend/web/"
           
        <Directory "/path/to/yii-application/frontend/web/">
            # use mod_rewrite for pretty URL support
            RewriteEngine on
            # If a directory or a file exists, use the request directly
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
            # Otherwise forward the request to index.php
            RewriteRule . index.php

            # use index.php as index file
            DirectoryIndex index.php

            # ...other settings...
            # Apache 2.4
            Require all granted
               
            ## Apache 2.2
            # Order allow,deny
            # Allow from all
        </Directory>
    </VirtualHost>
       
    <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName backend.test
        DocumentRoot "/path/to/yii-application/backend/web/"
           
        <Directory "/path/to/yii-application/backend/web/">
            # use mod_rewrite for pretty URL support
            RewriteEngine on
            # If a directory or a file exists, use the request directly
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
            # Otherwise forward the request to index.php
            RewriteRule . index.php

            # use index.php as index file
            DirectoryIndex index.php

            # ...other settings...
            # Apache 2.4
            Require all granted
               
            ## Apache 2.2
            # Order allow,deny
            # Allow from all
        </Directory>
    </VirtualHost>

    For nginx:

        server {
        charset utf-8;
        client_max_body_size 128M;

        listen 80; ## listen for ipv4
        #listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6

        server_name frontend.test;
        root        /path/to/yii-application/frontend/web/;
        index       index.php;

        access_log  /path/to/yii-application/log/frontend-access.log;
        error_log   /path/to/yii-application/log/frontend-error.log;

        location / {
            # Redirect everything that isn't a real file to index.php
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
        }

        # uncomment to avoid processing of calls to non-existing static files by Yii
        #location ~ \.(js|css|png|jpg|gif|swf|ico|pdf|mov|fla|zip|rar)$ {
        #    try_files $uri =404;
        #}
        #error_page 404 /404.html;

        # deny accessing php files for the /assets directory
        location ~ ^/assets/.*\.php$ {
            deny all;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
            include fastcgi_params;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
            #fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
            try_files $uri =404;
        }
       
        location ~* /\. {
            deny all;
        }
    }
        
    server {
        charset utf-8;
        client_max_body_size 128M;
       
        listen 80; ## listen for ipv4
        #listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6
       
        server_name backend.test;
        root        /path/to/yii-application/backend/web/;
        index       index.php;
       
        access_log  /path/to/yii-application/log/backend-access.log;
        error_log   /path/to/yii-application/log/backend-error.log;
       
        location / {
            # Redirect everything that isn't a real file to index.php
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
        }
       
        # uncomment to avoid processing of calls to non-existing static files by Yii
        #location ~ \.(js|css|png|jpg|gif|swf|ico|pdf|mov|fla|zip|rar)$ {
        #    try_files $uri =404;
        #}
        #error_page 404 /404.html;

        # deny accessing php files for the /assets directory
        location ~ ^/assets/.*\.php$ {
            deny all;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
            include fastcgi_params;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
            #fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
            try_files $uri =404;
        }
       
        location ~* /\. {
            deny all;
        }
    }

  5. Change the hosts file to point the domain to your server.

    • Windows: c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
    • Linux: /etc/hosts

    Add the following lines:

    127.0.0.1   frontend.test
127.0.0.1   backend.test

  6. Open your browser and go to http://frontend.test/

  7. Create a user by selecting the Sign Up menu option at the top of the frontend home page.

  8. Provide the requested credentials, and complete the data entry with the Signup button. You will be presented with a message:
    Thank you for registration. Please check your inbox for verification email.

  9. Despite stating that a confirmation email has been sent, the default settings for the mailer prevents the sending of a real email. Instead, an eml format file is created in the directory @frontend/runtime/mail. Either open this file with a mail client such as Outlook or Thunderbird, or use a text editor to retrieve the URL which is used to confirm the User creation. The URL will need to be modified to remove the quoted printable encoding before pasting it in your browser.

    This can be accomplished manually as follows:

    • delete soft line breaks ‘=’ and newlines to create a single line with the line below
    • change ‘=3D’ to ‘=’
    • On Mac / Linux, convert \r\n to \n - MIME CRLF line breaks are "real" and should be preserved.

    Paste this URL into a browser tab to complete the User creation. You will be presented with the message: Your email has been confirmed!

  10. You are now automatically logged in to the frontend application. The same credentials can then be used to login to the backend application.

Note: if you want to run advanced template on a single domain so / is frontend and /admin is backend, refer to Using advanced project template at shared hosting.

Installing using Vagrant

This way is the easiest but long (~20 min).

This installation way doesn't require pre-installed software (such as web-server, PHP, MySQL etc.) - just do next steps!

Manual for Linux/Unix users

  1. Install VirtualBox
  2. Install Vagrant
  3. Create GitHub personal API token

  4. Prepare project:

    git clone https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2-app-advanced.git
cd yii2-app-advanced/vagrant/config
cp vagrant-local.example.yml vagrant-local.yml
  5. Place your GitHub personal API token to vagrant-local.yml

  6. Change directory to project root:

    cd yii2-app-advanced

  7. Run command:

    vagrant up

  8. SSH into vagrant box via vagrant ssh and execute php init.

That's all. You just need to wait for completion! After that you can access project locally by URLs:

Manual for Windows users

  1. Install VirtualBox
  2. Install Vagrant
  3. Reboot
  4. Create GitHub personal API token

  5. Prepare project:

    • download repo yii2-app-advanced
    • unzip it
    • go into directory yii2-app-advanced-master/vagrant/config
    • copy vagrant-local.example.yml to vagrant-local.yml

  6. Place your GitHub personal API token to vagrant-local.yml

  7. Open terminal (cmd.exe), change directory to project root and run command:

    vagrant up

    (You can read here how to change directories in command prompt)

That's all. You just need to wait for completion! After that you can access project locally by URLs:

Installing using Docker

Install the application dependencies

docker-compose run --rm backend composer install

Initialize the application by running the init command within a container

docker-compose run --rm backend php /app/init

Adjust the components['db'] configuration in common/config/main-local.php accordingly.

    'dsn' => 'mysql:host=mysql;dbname=yii2advanced',
    'username' => 'yii2advanced',
    'password' => 'secret',

Docker networking creates a DNS entry for the host mysql available from your backend and frontend containers.

If you want to use another database, such a Postgres, uncomment the corresponding section in docker-compose.yml and update your database connection.

    'dsn' => 'pgsql:host=pgsql;dbname=yii2advanced',

For more information about Docker setup please visit the guide.

Start the application

docker-compose up -d

Run the migrations

docker-compose run --rm backend yii migrate

Access it in your browser by opening

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Difference from basic project template